coinsurance

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

n. Insurance held jointly by two or more insurers.

n. A form of insurance in which a person insures property for less than its full value and agrees to be responsible for the difference.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. The joint assumption of risk between the insurer and the insured party.

n. The joint assumption of risk between multiple insurers.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n. Insurance jointly with another or others; specif., that system of fire insurance in which the insurer is treated as insuring himself to the extent of that part of the risk not covered by his policy, so that any loss is apportioned between him and the insurance company on the principle of average, as in marine insurance or between other insurers.

Etymologies

Examples

In fact, the regulations impose a major vise on private insurance, restricting a company's ability to increase cost sharing (such as coinsurance, deductibles and out-of pocket limits) as well as copayments ( "more than the sum of medical inflation plus 15 percentage points or $5 increased by medical inflation").

That 13% savings also happens roughly to match what economic studies estimate for the economy as a whole if the national "coinsurance" rate were corrected for the tax bias in favor of insured spending.

Suppose, for example, that an individual could purchase a clothing insurance policy with a "coinsurance" rate of 20 percent, meaning that after paying the insurance premium, the holder of the insurance policy would have to pay only 20 cents on the dollar for all clothing purchases.

Essentially, you can purchase catastrophic health insurance, reducing your monthly insurance premiums dramatically, and put money that can be used to cover the deductible and coinsurance if you need it up to an annual cap into a Health Savings Account.

But insurers can lose this "grandfathered status" by making such changes as reducing the coverage of particular conditions or raising deductibles, co-payments and coinsurance shares above amounts set by formula.